Three Weeks

Friday marked three weeks since we purchased the house.  We're going through money like crazy, but things are moving along at a good speed.

The bathroom tiling is almost done.  The wall tiles are in and grouted.  We got quick-set grout and it set a little too fast.  (I haven't seen it since the grout went in, but Niall tells me it looks fine.)




The loft conversion is starting on Monday.  We're staying with ladder access until we either build a side extension or put in a dormer for fixed stairs.  We're doing the majority of the work now.

Since the work is starting on Monday, the supplies arrived on Friday.  Holy cow, the insulation is expensive.  We need to have a u-value of .15, which means we need 100 mm of insulation between the rafters and another 60 mm on top of that.  So, uh, we now have a lot of insulation.

As a reminder- the loft used to be boarded in with cladding.  It was probably the best room in the house. We weren't sure what to do with the loft, and foolishly didn't budget anything for it initially.  But there wasn't any insulation in the loft, which meant a good portion of the heat would be lost.  We made the decision to rip everything out and go from there.  We had to get a warrant from Building Control to 'convert' the loft, since they didn't have the previous conversion in their records.

To strengthen the floor the structural engineer specified that new 175 x 50 joists be nailed to the existing.  In order to get the long timbers into the loft, the guys cut a hole in the small bedroom ceiling, and passed the timber from the window into the loft.  You can kind of see the hole in the picture below.
So, yeah, we have £2200 of materials (insulation, chipboard flooring and joists) waiting for the joiners to transform this room.

The kitchen is coming along.  We didn't have the layout fully planned, because we weren't sure how the bump from the steels would turn out or how much room the boiler would take.  So we're kind of making things up as we're going along in relation to the area between the dishwasher and single window.  I hope it doesn't end up looking horrible.  (You know, if you fail to plan you plan to fail and all.)  The joiners have built a little cupboard to house the boiler and all the pipes, we have a larder (pull-out pantry) unit that fits, and we're just going to have to wait and decide the best way to handle the space.

Remember how I said all the wallpaper was out of the house?  Well, I was wrong.  The vestibule (between the storm doors and front door) was still fully papered.  We thought the paper could stay because it would be covered with plaster board (dry wall).  Because of the tight space, plasterboard isn't an option.

The wallpaper in that little area was a BEAST.  It took me seven painful hours (with a steamer and as much elbow grease as I could muster), but the vestibule is now paper free.  I am so glad that the rest of the wallpaper in the house came off with less effort.

Once finished (and after sweeping the site and a few trips to the dump) I was a dusty, dirty mess.